Written by

The Tennessean

Joelton wrestles with change to preserve its differences

Joelton is a community that celebrates and fights to preserve the fact that it's a little different than the rest of Davidson County.

"Everybody knows everybody," said Norma Harvison, a lifelong resident of Joelton. "And we'll make a point to talk to you. We're just different, you don't really know until you spend time here."

Its most prominent area politician, Metro Councilman Guy Bates, who passed away in 2000, was better known in Joelton for giving needy families free groceries than for his litany of civic accomplishments, which include launching the town's water utility district in 1962 and bringing in Metro services such as water, sewer, fire, ambulance, parks, roads and street lights.

The school secretary Darlene Glasgow Barnes - one of just three women to hold the job in the past 75 years - is called "momma" by the children she treats for an achy stomach or comforts after a tough day in the classroom. Residents know each other on a first-name basis, and many families are inter-connected.

Darlene Glasgow Barnes, one of the last graduates of Joelton High, is now a secretary at Joelton Middle. Barnes's life has been tied to the building that once housed Joelton High School and has been a center of community life.

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Through all of the changes to the community over the past 50 years, First Baptist Church of Joelton has been a town pillar where families gather for worship, weddings, baptisms and funerals. The church congregation has about 2,000 people, according to its unofficial historian, Sarah Anderson. For context, Joelton has a population of 7,500, according to the most recent census.

Joelton, located in northwest Davidson County and bordered by Cheatham and Robertson counties, is an area defined by an ongoing tension between inevitable change and efforts to keep the bucolic community with rolling hills, large residential lots and a single stoplight as much the same as possible. That tension has led to a series of preservation battles, of which Joelton neighbors have won some and lost others.

Efforts to block Interstate 24 from cutting through area farms failed in the late 1970s. But in the early 1990s, a group of community organizers, led by Bates and others, successfully staved off a Metro push to locate a new landfill there.

The community took a major hit when the high school closed in 1980 and its teenagers were forced to attend Whites Creek High School or pay to go to private schools. The high school building is now Joelton Middle School.

"It was like family. We all grew up with each other and this was like our hangout for the Joelton community," said Glasgow Barnes, who was one of the final Joelton High graduates and has worked at the middle school for 16 years.

Joelton is a community that has fought to preserve its rural lifestyle while itís also welcomed new parks and services.

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Joelton Multimedia

Guy Bates Jr. and Suzanne Bates McGehee, talk about their father Guy Bates, Joelton's most influential politician, blocking a proposal to build a city landfill there, bringing water, fire and streetscape services to town and fighting to save Joelton High. Guy Bates owned the neighborhood grocery market for years.

In the early 1990s when Metro planners pushed to allow for more residential development, neighbors fought to block the plan, though it ultimately passed. Joelton suffered an emotional loss in 1995 when Bates sold the family grocery store, which later closed in 2005.

Despite those changes, Joelton remains a rough facsimile to the community longtime residents remember so fondly from their own experiences growing up there. The Baptist church is still the hub of the community. The best lunch still can be found at Joe's diner. With the exception of the occasional ballgame at the school or the regulars who get a beer at Friends Bar, things generally go quiet at night.

"It still has some of that small community spirit left," Anderson said.

And, Joelton has benefited from its affiliation with Metro. In a 1978 family photo, Bates beamed with pride over the opening of a new fire hall. Bates helped bring improvements that other parts of Nashville hardly notice - a successful water and sewer system, new roads, even street lights.

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Bates represented the Joelton area on the council from 1975 to 1991.

Of all the comings and goings in the past 50 years, nothing left an imprint quite like the closing of the high school, which created a community void for meeting space and recreational options for kids. That will change this spring with the opening of Paradise Ridge Park and its $2.3 million community center. Harvison and her husband, Charlie, fought for 22 years to bring the community center to Joelton.

The project broke ground last year just one week after Charlie Harvison passed away. Last year, Norma Harvison found out the gymnasium at the community center will be dedicated to her late husband.

"I can't tell you how happy that made me," she said. "It was finally his dream's coming true, and I wished he'd lived to see it come to fruition, but I think he knows."

Sarah Anderson, First Baptist Church of Joelton, shares the sense of family within the church, which has been a cornerstone of the Joelton community for nearly 100 years. The church recently completed a $3.5 million new sanctuary.

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Norma Harvison, park advocate, worked with her husband Charlie Harvison for 22 years to bring a new park and community center to Joelton. Last year, Mayor Karl Dean officially gave the green light, and the $2.3 million project broke ground one week after Charlie Harvisonís passing.

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